Downtown Barrie
Pay’em To Play

NRU
Nov. 29, 2017
Daniel Taylor

Barrie has found success in a program that puts street performers on the city’s payroll to help create a pedestrian-friendly environment for downtown businesses. The program also costs less than the former permit-based system. 

Barrie’s street performer’s program, an innovative partnership between the city and the Downtown Barrie Business Improvement Area, began in 2009. It enables the city to hire street performers, who work on the streets of downtown Barrie as non-union city employees. 

Downtown Barrie Business Association managing director Craig Stevens told NRU that the program was originally an add-on to a patio program along the main streets in the downtown. Adding street performers was intended to create an animated, pedestrian-friendly atmosphere. 

“It was something that was [built] around activating public spaces. On our main street we had put together a patio program where restaurants and cafes could take parking spots, build out the sidewalk and use the regular sidewalk as a patio ... We developed a street performer program to help engage and animate the [the downtown] to create more of that pedestrian friendly, urban environment that we’re trying to capture. It’s been a big part of that.” 

The program has gained enough momentum that it has become part of public life for Barrie residents. Invest Barrie culture branch manager Onalee Groves explained to NRU that people have come to expect the downtown programming. 

“People know now that between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. they can go downtown to hear local performers play, and we publish a list of who is playing when, it’s been a big hit.” 

The success of the program is largely due to changes made in 2014 to address difficulties the city was having in providing consistent and reliable programming. The city moved from a permit-based system in which musicians paid $50 or $100 for a permit to play in the downtown, to a paid performance system in which musicians are paid an hourly wage. 

For the Downtown BIA, which contributes $1,800 annually towards performers’ salaries, the program has become an important economic development resource in the area. 

“They go through a full audition, so they’re all high quality performers ... but we need to appreciate what the artist can do, their worth and their value [to public spaces]. Unless you’re in a major city where you can rely on support ‘out of your hat’ so to speak, giving them some kind of base pay is encouraging for them,” Stevens said. “So if it’s a slow day they know they can still go out and perform and make some money ... It’s definitely worth the [financial] investment. It ensures consistency of the program and you’re able to promote it and use it as a resource. You make the area more public and visitor friendly.” 

Staff report the cost of the program change is essentially neutral. The total program cost to the city under the permit system when it began in 2009 was $11,673. In 2017 under the city payroll system, the cost is reported to be $9,072.26, including salaries, benefits and related expenses. 

“You see we had to pay for the insurance liability of our street performers, which was a challenge. We could only have a certain number of performers and the permit fees they were paying only covered a small part of the cost,” said Groves. 

Positive feedback from program participants motivated city staff to develop a peer-to-peer presentation on the street performer program to the Creative City Network of Canada at its 2017 summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia this past October. 

On Monday, Barrie council requested staff to review the program and report back on a full range of financial models to implement the program by the end of March, 2018, before the program restarts in the spring.